Obama Officials Made List to Safeguard Russia Probe Documents

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FILE - President Donald Trump meets with female small business owners in White House, March 27, 2017, amid ongoing investigations into his campaign's ties to Russia and its interference with the presidential election. An Obama official tells NBC News that he made a list of serial numbers of documents related to the Russia probe and took it to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee for safekeeping.

Out of concern over what could happen to key classified documents related to the Russia probe under the new administration, Obama administration officials created a list of document serial numbers to give to senior members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A former Obama official told NBC News that after the list of documents related to the investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. election was created in early January, he carried it to committee members by hand.

The official created and distributed the list, he said, to make it "harder to bury" the information and to share it with those "who could lawfully see the documents." The list of numbers itself was not classified, according to the official.